


the dark things you fear

by lost_spook



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, Request Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 04:05:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4005235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's fear that keeps them together and apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dark things you fear

**Author's Note:**

> Written for PhoenixDragon in an LJ meme (for the prompt "the dark things you fear" + Doctor/Master).

The deepest and darkest of fears aren’t always the obvious ones – not the monsters, nor the defeats, nor the vastness of time and space, but hidden, insidious things that live coiled inside. The Master will never admit, even to himself, that with the Doctor what he fears the most is not losing, but winning.

What would there be left for him after his enemy’s death at his hands? A cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about; it’s hardly worth conquering.

He pulls his enemy back from death – again – letting him out of the rapidly flooding dungeons. “You mustn’t die, Doctor,” he says. “Not yet, not before I’ve finished with you!” He always has an excuse.

And the Doctor – the Doctor fears both forgetting and remembering. As the Master hauls him out, he’s afraid it might be too easy to forget the evil he’s caused, to remember what he once was. 

A cosmos with both in alliance doesn’t bear thinking about, either.


End file.
